Second Sun

Two of the greatest pressures on society today include humanity’s manipulation of the environment and the advancements in bioengineering of the human body. The first is changing the makeup of the physical spaces we occupy and the second, the very body that senses that environment. At this intersection are the physical boundaries that create architectural space. Integrating these two quickly advancing industries as the epicenter of architectural design can open the possibilities of the disciplines spatial, social, and environmental discourse.

The urban public park is the backbone of leisure, recreation, health, and community engagement. Nowhere is this more apparent and clearly demonstrated than in Chicago during the summer months. Yet as climate change continues and technologies open the possibilities of how our bodies communicate with our environment, parks are still seen as passive spaces subject to local weather and an outmoded definition of the human body. Second Sun takes street lighting as a starting point, layering additional forms of energy (thermal, acoustic, electromagnetic, chemical) in an attempt to give shape to a new architecture.

As advancements in steel, glass, and concrete have shown before, new materials can do more than reproduce existing architecture—they form a dialogue with emerging social and political pressures to produce new spaces, aesthetics, and social engagements. Second Sun places architecture at the center of today’s pressures to engage and inform the industries and policies that will give shape to our environment, our bodies, and the spaces we call architecture.

WEATHERS is a Chicago-based design office founded by architect Sean Lally. Lally is the author of the recently published book The Air from Other Planets: A Brief History of Architecture to Come (Lars Müller Publishers, 2014). He is the recipient of the 2012 Prince Charitable Trusts Rome Prize in Landscape Architecture from the American Academy in Rome and the winner of the 2012 Architectural League Prize for Young Architects and Designers.www.weathers.cc | @Sean_Lally